One Wrong Move (18 page)

“Yes?” Oleg barked.

“He’s in there now,” she whispered.

Oleg gave a noncommittal grunt. “Good. Wait.”

So she did. Seconds dragged by. She twitched, fidgeted. Oleg had no problem with the silence. He sat like a spider, waiting for the bug to hit the web. Her eyes fastened on the IV drip of the sleeping patient in the dim room. Her ears strained for the sound of the adjoining door.

At last, the click of the door closing. “He’s leaving,” she whispered.

“Eh? Well, then! What are you waiting for? Follow him!

Fool!”

She peeked out the door. Sasha was accompanied by a woman.

From behind, she gave the impression of being from another time, costumed. Amish, maybe, with her dull, full-skirted dress, her long, severe braid. Her arm was around Sasha’s waist. She seemed to be steering him down the corridor. Fay did not remember her from the conversation with Sasha. Or did she? Fresh fear jarred her.

Don’t let him see you.
As if it were so easy for her to lurk and skulk. She was in her fifties, forty pounds overweight, arthritis in both hips, high heels that she cursed herself for wearing.

She waited until the stairwell door slammed shut, and clattered to the end of the corridor to peek through it. Another tense wait while the woman had shepherded Sasha safely out the exit to the street, and she scrambled after them. She ran out, panicking when she saw no one, running into the street, spinning until she—yes, oh, God, thank you. There they were. Halfway down the block.

The woman pushed him onto a bus stop bench, and sat on his lap, hugging him. Fay eased herself into the shadow of a locked newsstand. She was almost certain the woman had not been there when Sasha made his blustering entrance. She whispered into the cell. “They’re sitting at a bus stop on Mercer, near the corner of Sprague.”

“They? He is not alone?”

“He’s with a woman,” she whispered. “A young woman.”

“Ah. A woman. Hmmph. A bus, you say?” Oleg’s voice was heavy with disbelief. “My Sasha is waiting for a
bus?
”

“Ah . . . I think they are just, um, talking,” she said inanely.

“She’s sitting on his lap. What do you want me to do?”

“Wait,” he said. “Watch them. My people are on their way. You watch until they arrive.”

A cramp clutched her belly. “What are they going to do to them?”

“It is not your business. Shut up, ey? Sasha’s ears are sharp. I am hanging up now. Call me if they move.”

She did as she was told, dreading what might happen when Oleg’s people arrived. She just hoped they wouldn’t hurt Sasha and the young woman. Or if they did, that she wouldn’t have to watch it.

But before anyone could arrive, the couple got up and took off again. This time, Sasha no longer stumbled. He slid his arm around the woman’s waist and swept her along so she had to scurry to keep up. Fay scurried, too. They got into a car. Lights flicked on, illuminating the license plate. She held up her phone, clicking for the camera app, but the car was pulling away, and she wasn’t quick enough.

She just stared at the plate, repeating the number to fix it in her mind. She tried to catch the make, the model, but all she could see from this distance was that it was a black Toyota of some sort.

It pulled away, taillights receding. She doubled over, hands pressed to her knees. Her pants had turned into sobs, but she had to make this call before she forgot that plate number, before he decided to punish Cass and Wills because she was such a goddamn, stupid cow.

She pushed “redial.” The line clicked open. “And?”

“It was a black Toyota,” she blurted, and recited the license plate number to him before he could reply. “It’s heading west, on Reading.”

“Are you in a car following them?”

As if. She almost laughed, but that could get her children killed. “No,” she croaked. “I’m on foot. I can’t see them anymore.”

“Fucking amateurs,” he grumbled. “Twenty years, and my Sasha is driving a fucking Toyota? What a joke. Are you sure it was a Toyota?”

She gabbled for a moment, at a loss. “Ah, um, er, yes, I think . . .

I . . . I think it was a black Toyota four-door, I’m almost sure I saw—”

“Never mind. Shut up, Fay. Go home.” His voice was benevo-lent now. “I will let you know when you are needed again.”

Her legs wouldn’t hold her. She sank down, shaking, like a junkie having d.t.’s. People avoided looking at her, just as she herself avoided looking at people reduced to trembling on the sidewalk. She thought of Tonya Arbatov, hooked to her morphine drip. A turn of the dial would up her dose, until her organs shut down. And it would all go away.

Fay held strong opinions about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. She was a crusader for pain control and quality end-of-life care. Now look at her, tempted to abandon her cherished ideals. Tempted to go to Tonya Arbatov’s room, and end it. Oleg would have no more reason to remember her existence. Or Cass’s, or Wills’s.

Except that then, instead of just being a mafia stooge, she’d be a murderer, too. And if Oleg ever found out what she had done . . .

The very thought made her queasy and faint.

“Why did you disobey me, Dmitri?”

Oleg’s voice seemed gentle, but every cell of Dmitri’s body knew better. It literally
hurt,
to stand in front of Oleg and with-stand his disapproval.

“I gave you orders to watch the hospice. Did you not take me seriously? Did you think, ah, foolish old Uncle Oleg, he is just a stupid old man, ey? He will never notice. Did you think that of me?”

No.
Dmitri could not make the word loud enough to be heard.

“No, nephew? Then this stupid, tired old man is even more confused.” Oleg’s eyes glittered in his sunken eye sockets. Dmitri could not look him in the eye. He’d topped up, and he regretted it. When he used, there was no protective barrier of incomprehension between him and Oleg’s derision. He felt it all. . . .
junkie
scum is stoned . . . a blessing that my poor brother is dead . . . cannot see
what a worthless turd his son has become. . . .
It made his eyes sting, his nose run, his nerves twitch.

“You were not at the hospice when he came. I had to use that cow Fay Siebring to trail him, which she succeeded in doing for exactly two hundred fucking meters. Where were you, Dmitri?

Drinking, gambling? Shooting up one of your drugs, fucking one of your whores?”

“No,” he said.

“Then what, Dmitri? Tell me.”

Oleg was not a telepath, but he had power. Certainly the power to make Dmitri feel lower than a cockroach.

“Tell me, nephew!” Oleg’s command reverberated through him.

He had no choice but to tell the truth. “I was, uh, on another job.”

Oleg’s thick eyebrows twitched up. “Ah! You should have told me, nephew, that you no longer work for me, just as a professional courtesy. So, then. A new boss? Tell me about him. He must pay well. This Versace suit, those Ferragamo shoes; is this new boss a billionaire? This new job is more important than the task of waiting for your cousin?”

The impulse to babble was overwhelming. “Not a boss,” he blurted. “A business partnership that I’m, er, exploring. An incredible opportunity. A man I know is producing a unique designer drug—”

“A drug,” Oleg repeated heavily. “Ah, yes. They are all so unique.”

“He, ah, had an urgent problem today, and needed some support with personnel, so he, ah, called me.”

“Ah, yes. Ivan and Mikhail were your personnel support, no?

Both dead, I hear. A detective came to talk to Yevgeni and Ste-fan. Their bodies were in the house of, what was the woman’s name? Nina Christie? He is very interested in talking to you. But of course . . .” Oleg made an expansive gesture. “We have no idea where to find you. You are as elusive as the wind, nephew.”

“Thank you, Uncle. I—”

“Fuck your thanks.” Oleg’s voice crashed down. “You are using this drug, no? You dare come to me stoned, and think I will not see?”

“I—I—”

“Are you addicted?” Oleg thundered. “Tell me the truth!”

“It’s not like that! It’s a different kind of—”

“I see. You are not working for me, or this other man, either.

You are his bitch, Dmitri. You are just a drug whore now.”

Dmitri kept shaking his head. “No. If I got a steady supply of this, it would make you more money than you could even imagine.”

Oleg snorted. “I can count somewhat higher than you, nephew. Drugs are money, Dmitri, nothing more. But you know what kills the money? Using them. Use them, and you have un-fastened your pants and bent over. But I should not talk to a junkie. They cannot hear.”

. . . piece of shit . . . cannot be my heir . . .

“This drug is different,” Dmitri insisted. “It lets me read minds.”

Oleg began to laugh. “Why on earth would you want to do that? People’s minds are full of garbage! What is the profit in reading them? I would pay to be spared such a thing!”

“It’s not always telepathy!” he protested. “Different abilities manifest for everyone who takes it! Telepathy happened to be mine. It augments whatever natural latent ability that—”

“Shut up. A drug is a drug, and I have never seen any natural ability in you, latent or otherwise.” He reached down, finding the spot on his nephew’s thigh where the bullet had grazed him beneath the suit pants. His uncle’s big fingers clamped.

“Uncle, I’m sorry,” he began. “I . . . oh,
fuck . . .
”

Oleg squeezed, until blood soaked through the dressing, his pant leg. The room swayed. A sound came out of him, thin and anguished.

Oleg let go. Dmitri fell to his knees. Oleg examined the stamp of blood on his hand and wiped his hand on the front of Dmitri’s dove-gray shirt. “The pursuit of this drug is a dangerous activity?”

“You don’t understand.” Dmitri couldn’t stop the bleating words, though he knew it was futile. “It’s like . . . like a super-power, uncle.”

idiot . . . fucking cockroach . . . got men killed for his dose . . .

To his horror, his uncle reached out again, plucked open the lapel of his suit jacket, and pulled Nina Christie’s cell phone out of it. How the hell had the old man known?

“This phone is not your style, Dmitri. Over two years old.”

Dmitri shook his head. “It’s mine. I have many phones.”

“Then you will not mind if I crush this one, under my foot?”

Oleg dropped it on the ground, poised his heel over it.

“No!” Dmitri yelled.

“I see.” Oleg picked it up, and tucked it into his coat. “Don’t worry. I will keep it safe, and Yevgeni will ferret out all its secrets tonight, ey? Don’t try to be a superman, Dmitri. Go out, and look for Sasha, like all the rest of my men. He drives a 2012 black Toyota. Memorize this plate number.” His uncle passed him a small slip of paper.

Dmitri pocketed it, watching his death play out in several different ways in his uncle’s head. . . .
strangulation, drowning, faked suicide,
from a drug overdose, perhaps . . . believable . . . yes, past time . . .

“Reading minds,” Oleg scoffed once again. “Show me how you read minds, nephew. Read mine right now. What am I thinking?”

Fresh blood trickled down his leg, hot and ticklish. “That I am scum,” he said. “That you wish me dead. And Sasha here in my place.”

“It does not take mind reading to guess that much. Get out of my sight. Be the first to find your cousin.”

Or else drive into a lake and save me the trouble.

Enigmas made Aaro’s teeth grind, which knocked him into standby default mood. Pissed off.

True, weird things had tended to happen around Aunt Tonya, which was why she’d spent so much of her adult life locked inside various institutions. She freaked people out. Made them feel the way he felt right now. Nervous, twitchy, tossed ass over head. Not good.

Like he and Nina hadn’t already got a big enough dose of shock and awe that day. He’d only just gotten comfortable with the hypothesis that Nina was whacked out on some garden variety drug trip, that it would pass and be no more than an unnerving memory. But no.

He’d considered himself good with weird, but he couldn’t make the ends match on this mess, no matter how he turned and twisted it. So what the fuck. He’d use his usual technique. Put a big, heavy iron lid on the subject, and bolt that fucker down.

“A question, please.”

Nina’s voice had that prim tone that set his teeth on edge. He struggled to keep his voice even moderately civil. “Ask it.”

“I asked you this before, but we got distracted by the, um, foreign language thing,” she said. “I still think you’re remembering wrong, and that she was speaking in English, because it’s the only—”

“Drop it, and ask your damn question.”

It took a few moments to get her pump primed again. “Why in God’s name did you let your aunt think we were a couple?”

He spotted a chain hotel, and changed lanes to turn into it.

“What does it matter? You’ve never seen her before. You’ll never see her again. She’ll be gone from this earth in days, and I’ll be gone from your life. What do you care what she thinks?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem right, lying to someone who’s on her way out. If you’re not going to be honest to a dying person, who will you be honest to, for God’s sake?”

“Honesty’s overrated,” he muttered.

“You mean, overrated when it’s inconvenient for you, right?

You demanded honesty from me, remember? Every sore and every score?”

“That was different,” he grumbled.

“You mean, honesty isn’t important if you’re not the one being deceived, right? Be consistent, Aaro!”

“You weren’t dying,” he pointed out.

“I came pretty damn close today, if you recall!”

“Yeah, I recall just fine.” He jerked to a stop in the temporary parking in front of the lobby, and killed the engine. “It’s been a hell of a day. I’m dead tired. Don’t ask me to measure up to your goddamn high standards tonight, Nina. Just shut the fuck up.”

She turned eloquently away. Silent reproach, the Nina Christie special. They just sat there, in silence. Laying on the guilt, with a trowel, while he thought of how she’d made it happen for him at the hospice. Getting him in to see Tonya with her magic sneakiness.